1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to electro-optical devices, such as liquid crystal devices, and to electronic apparatuses including the electro-optical devices, such as liquid crystal projectors.
2. Related Art
As an example of such electro-optical devices, liquid crystal devices are often used, for example, as optical modulators (light valves) in projection display devices. Particularly, in the case of a projection display device, since intense light emitted from a light source enters a liquid crystal light valve, in order to prevent the light from causing an increase in leakage currents, incorrect operations, or the like at thin-film transistors (TFTs) in the liquid crystal light valve, a light-blocking film is provided in the liquid crystal light valve as a light-blocking portion that blocks incident light. More specifically, for example, the light-blocking film is formed of at least portions of conductive films forming data lines and scanning lines extending vertically and horizontally in a display region, and various electronic elements including TFTs for the individual pixels electrically connected to the scanning lines and the data lines in order to drive the individual pixels. Alternatively or in addition, the light-blocking film is formed separately as a grid-shaped or stripe-shaped pattern corresponding to the planar pattern of the data lines and the scanning lines as a light-blocking portion that is provided simply to block incident light. In addition to preventing occurrence of leakage currents to improve the quality of displayed images as described above, for example, the light-blocking film also serves to prevent light from being emitted outward at boundaries of adjacent pixels, where the orientation of liquid crystal tends to be unstable so that orientation defects could occur.
According to JP-A-9-171196, in a region where such a light-blocking film is formed on a substrate, i.e., in a non-aperture region on the substrate where light does not transmit, in order to electrically interconnect a TFT and a pixel electrode at each pixel, a contact hole is formed through an inter-layer insulating film insulating the layer of the pixel electrode from the lower layer of various lines and electronic elements such as TFTs.
However, with the configuration of the contact hole disclosed in JP-A-9-171196, when viewed in plan on the substrate, a portion of the light-blocking film is formed merely to allocate a region for forming the contact hole, irrelevantly to the intended function of achieving favorable image display. Thus, the size of the aperture region at each pixel is restricted, so that the numerical aperture is reduced. This causes degradation of the quality of displayed images.